ARCHITECTURE Hot spots: Water over wine8/15/2014Enjoy the hot summer in the cool world of wine cellars: The architecture of the VIK vineyard Smiljan Radić designed in Chile’s Millahue valley truly refreshes the senses.
ARCHITECTURE Please swarm out8/11/2014Team Berlin: The city as a nervous system requires a different kind of swarming behavior.
ARCHITECTURE Hot spots: In the shadow of the giant mushroom8/8/2014In the inner courtyard of the MoMA PS1 David Benjamin’s installation provides welcome shade in the summer heat, thanks to a weave made of thousands of microorganisms.
ARCHITECTURE Hot spots: a Modernist dip8/4/2014Guaranteed no “themed giant flumes” or “hot whirlpool” at Álvaro Siza’s “Piscinas de Marés”. Here you can immerse yourself in Portuguese Modernism.
ARCHITECTURE Trade off8/1/2014May 28-30, 2014: Attending the third “Global Infrastructure Initiative” in Rio de Janeiro, organized by McKinsey & Co. The gathering is dominated by an almost limitless optimism about the blessings of technology and the belief that innovation by the infrastructure sector (coupled to extravagant funds) will eventually cure all the contemporary city’s ails…
ARCHITECTURE Hot spots: A pool in the desert7/30/2014Life is pretty hot in the desert, at least during the day. So what could be more handy than a pool to cool off in. Or to lie in pondering life, the universe. Just be sure to remember the key.
ARCHITECTURE The new Henninger Turm remains a landmark7/28/2014For the architects Meixner Schlüter Wendt planning a high-rise is normally a fascinating task. In designing the new Henninger Turm in Frankfurt/Main they show how living in a high-rise can be both personalized and attractive.
ARCHITECTURE Hot Spots: swimming in the city or in the river7/18/2014Is there anything nicer than having a cool dip on a scorchingly hot day? Best of all downtown.
ARCHITECTURE Hot Spots: The One-Man Sauna7/14/2014Forget about the mixed sauna! In Bochum, people not only analyze urban interstices, they also get in a sweat all by themselves.
ARCHITECTURE The thing inside the sawmill7/11/2014Madrid’s architect duo of Langarita Navarro is among the emerging young representatives of the “Movida Madrileña”: Their latest work, the Medialab building for Prado, stands for an unpretentious and ironic take on history.
ARCHITECTURE Cosmopoverty7/2/2014Urban hurrah or unhappy rural exodus? People who live in the city are considered cosmopolitan. And yet: The flipside of this humungous influx to the cities reveals quite a different kind of international living: poor cosmopolitans, deprived of urban benefits.
FEATURED New Basel Working World7/1/2014For insurance company Basler Versicherungen Total Office Management developed a flexible office concept. The pilot project features office furniture from the Flow Work System range by Lista Office LO.
ARCHITECTURE Lively, spontaneous, Brazilian6/30/2014The “Lina Bo Bardi: Together” exhibition at Deutsches Architektur Zentrum (DAZ) in Berlin focuses on an architect who came to fame as a passionate champion of subsidized building in Brazil. Yet she remained an outsider at the “Escola Paulista”.
ARCHITECTURE Fast tube to enjoyment6/29/2014Astonishing things are happening on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein. Anyone climbing Carsten Höller’s “Slide Tower” will find not just an amazing view beckoning, but a slide with a great ride down. Added to which, grand master Álvaro Siza has created a new promenade that offers a novel route round the campus.
ARCHITECTURE Cocoon by fashion patterns6/27/2014Compared to last year’s Serpentine Pavilions, the new one by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić’s is certainly the most astounding and unpredictable yet.
FEATURED Scandinavian Dolce Vita6/24/2014Bronda, a restaurant on Eteläesplanadi, a promenade in the center of Helsinki, is both urban and spacious in feel. A high, elongated room with lots of space and a large window front sets a suitable stage for a city-dwelling public in the Finnish capital since this spring. Helsinki architects Futudesign styled the restaurant with timelessly elegant and generous fittings with furniture by Pedrali.
ARCHITECTURE Simple city life6/6/2014“Yourtopia” is the name Dutch architects SeARCH have given their pavilion located next to Het Nieuwe Instituut. An urban “Walden” and a call for us to leave our comfort zones.
ARCHITECTURE Resisting fitting the grid6/4/2014“A structure I have always wanted to demolish” was the title of a design assignment that Arno Lederer gave several times at Stuttgart and Karlsruhe universities. Not that the architect had always been hell-bent on tearing down the buildings belonging to the Stuttgarter Hospitalhof complex. Now he has had them demolished after all – and in their place realized a very convincing alternative that exudes nothing but perfection. Almost.
ARCHITECTURE Supercube reloaded5/30/2014The architects at Dutch firm Personal Architecture planned the partial refurbishment of the cube complex that Piet Blom built in 1980s Rotterdam. Now the “Supercubes” have been reintegrated into Rotterdam’s urban fabric and society.
ARCHITECTURE Budapest concrete5/26/2014Budapest’s fourth metro line opened this spring. Hopes of additional urban development projects are associated with this infrastructure project.
ARCHITECTURE The dreamed-up house5/19/2014With the Director’s Villa and the Moholy-Nagy House the ensemble of Gropius’ master houses in Dessau is complete again – and that includes a wall and the Mies van der Rohe kiosk. Repairs, reconstruction or radical reinterpretation, ghastly houses or gesamtkunstwerk, experiment or irritant?
ARCHITECTURE Disc music5/14/2014In 1996, Austro-American architect Raimund Abraham designed his “House for Music”. Today, 18 years later, the unusual home for music is now built – on the missile base of Stiftung Insel Hombroich nr. Neuss in the Rhineland.
ARCHITECTURE May we introduce Rupert?5/12/2014In an idyllic countryside near Lithuania's capital Vilnius, the Rupert Art and Education Centre offers artists and designers a working retreat. It was designed by Audrius Ambrasas, one of the country’s most famous architects.
ARCHITECTURE World panorama and digitalized top4/28/2014The days where information could simply be provided are long since over. Today the news is dished up, explained, elaborated on in depth, and commentary given. The design of news studios plays an important role in this regard. Among others, the new “Tagesschau” studio for Germany’s ARD channel shows just how many things can change around a news desk.
ARCHITECTURE Architecture’s creative struggle4/18/2014Architecture as a non-artistic discipline struggles between being a creative process and functional parameters. How could architecture transcend its eternal dilemma: the obligation to be critical in the face of inescapable submission?
ARCHITECTURE Going local: Tatiana Bilbao4/3/2014Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao makes buildings that sensitively engage with the specifics of the locations where they are erected. The result is an architecture that is pleasantly bemusing.
FEATURED Light and yet precious4/1/2014Van Cleef & Arpels has been a first class address on New York’s Fifth Avenue since the 1930s. Following necessary renovation work, the designers at the Jouin Manku Studio set about refurnishing the legendary jewelry store, drawing inspiration from New York Art Déco in their planning.
ARCHITECTURE Smart Cities – Big Data, Civic Hackers, and The Quest For A New Utopia4/1/2014In the cities of tomorrow high-tech networks are expected to make everyday life a lot easier. But the more complex the systems become, the more error-prone they get. Anthony M. Townsend confronts us with the extremely fragile systems of permanent enhancing efficiency.
ARCHITECTURE Architecture with an encore: Rojkind Arquitectos3/31/2014In a previous life Michel Rojkind played the drums for “La Gente Normal”, one of Mexico’s hottest rock bands. Luckily for us, he didn’t stay in music but decided to make architecture instead.
ARCHITECTURE Museum with a hair-do3/30/2014The new Jumex Museum in Mexico City by Chipperfield Architects speaks a pleasant, restrained architectural language.
ARCHITECTURE Derek Dellekamp’s fine feel for interspace3/26/2014Derek Dellekamp is one of the group of architects who helped rebuild the architectural scene in Mexico following the economic crisis there in the 1980s and 1990s. A portrait of one of the protagonists in Mexican architecture who is still successful today.
